The center of Ceres’ mysterious Occator Crater is the brightest area on the dwarf planet. The inset perspective view shows new data on this feature: Red signifies a high abundance of carbonates, while gray indicates a low carbonate abundance. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/ASI/INAF.

“Have you entered the springs of the sea? Or have you walked in search of the depths?” -Job 38:16

When NASA’s Dawn spacecraft discovered the existence of bright, white spots inside one of Ceres’ largest craters, the speculations ran wild, from water to aliens. Instead, it was determined that these highly reflective features are salts, likely deposited on Ceres’ surface fairly recently in this deep, less-than-100-million-year-old crater.

But new data, mostly in the infrared, has determined that these are carbonate salts, which are only deposited by liquid water, something not seen in abundance outside of Earth. This means these features likely have a hydrothermal origin, erupting from a subsurface ocean after a recent impact.